


fatigue.

by lorekeepings



Series: the call chronicles. [1]
Category: Wizard101 (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death, Childhood Friends, Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-War, War, no beta we die like malistaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:01:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorekeepings/pseuds/lorekeepings
Summary: she would not give them the gilded fable they wanted, the staff-wielding conjurer who brought order to an unruly place. she would not give them that satisfaction, and cyrus could not blame her.  /  three wizards go to defeat malistaire. only one returns, and cyrus drake helps his student mourn.
Series: the call chronicles. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073066
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	fatigue.

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i'm writing wizard101 fanfiction as a 21-year-old college student. the things we do in quarantine, am i right? anyways, as per usual, if you liked this, feel free to drop me a few dollars via cashapp $motherconjurer (username origin story lmao) and follow my wizard101 sideblog @ tumblr user mythtraps.
> 
> content related notes at the bottom. :) enjoy.

It was an unnecessary silence that filled the room, their tired bodies inhabiting the same space but not taking up any more than absolutely necessary. Victoria was always well-aware of how much space she took up in a room, especially now that the flesh of her body was raw, her eyes red with the tears she had wept before but could not bring forward now. Perhaps if she cried now, in front of her mentor — the only person who ever really believed in her — she would seek a vulnerability she had locked away at the expense of her humanity.

He places a mug in her hands, tells her to  _ drink,  _ and she looks up at him, brown eyes meeting those of her teacher. He sees so many questions hide behind her eyes, overwhelmed with the knowledge of being so young and being exposed to so much already. She says nothing, though, like she had for the past hour, and brings the cup to her lips, letting the warm tea trickle down the back of her throat and settle into her body. It is not the same warmth that came with Gabriel’s hugs or Samantha’s laughter, but it is a good substitute.

“Victoria,” Cyrus begins, his voice shattering their uncomfortable silence. She cannot help but smile at the first time he’s used her first name after years of schooling underneath him. Is tragedy really what it took for informality? The girl in front of him doesn’t question the usage of her name, saving her usual bouts of sarcasm for another time: he has lost someone he loved tonight, too. He bore witness to the tragedy that befell Victoria tonight, too. As the adult in this situation, though, he puts his feelings and pain aside to to comfort a scared, crying child — Victoria isn’t  _ stupid,  _ but she’s appreciative for his care all the same. At the end of the night, Cyrus has his fellow faculty, his lover to take care of him. Victoria has nothing, and no one. “I’m sure you have plenty you want to say.”

“Not really, no,” she replies, honestly. The swirl of the cream in her tea makes her smile: it isn’t anything like she would make back home in Marleybone, but it’s a good cup of tea. She wonders who taught him how to brew such a good cup: what comfort did her teacher need to perfect an art? “I suppose it hasn’t hit me that they’re gone, yet.”

Cyrus frowns, looking at her and searching her face for the lie. How could she not know they were gone when she watched them both die, held their corpses after the collapse and sobbed into their shoulders until he pulled her away from them? How could she not know they were gone when the headmaster asked her where her friends were, and she replied with such venom and hatred in her voice?

_ We were children,  _ she told Merle while Cyrus watched in silence.  _ You sent children to fight your war. _

Now that she was freshly eighteen, Cyrus wondered if she would finish her schooling— if she would be able to walk the roads of Ravenwood without thinking of her two best friends and how they joined her every morning for brunch after her obnoxiously-early lecture. He wondered if she would be able to, now that she knows her Marleybonian accent will never mix with Gabriel’s Dragonspyrian one ever again, both of them being mocked by the Wizard City native between them. He wondered if, when the semester started, she would be there bright and early and offer him a  _ Good morning, Professor Drake  _ as she had every morning. The life, the willingness to learn, the eagerness to study was missing from her eyes, instead replaced with the soulless hull his brother had moments before his own passing.

How much of her was human, anymore?

“They died heroes,” Cyrus consoles her, though before he’s finished speaking, he knows he’s said the wrong thing, her knuckles white against the porcelain of the mug he handed her. 

“They died too young,” Victoria replies, swallowing another mouthful of the tea. “But I suppose that doesn’t matter, does it? They’ll put up their little statue in the Commons and give us all our little titles, like  _ Savior of the Spiral,  _ and that’ll be the end of that. Everyone else will get to live in their bliss and I will have to go home alone. Your brother will just be dead. The world turns on. It’ll make for a good story.”

There was a particular heartache that pulsed through his chest at the mention of a good story. They were Conjurers, weavers of myth and keepers of lore — never were they supposed to write history, only summon it from the weave of magic that existed in all things. How much longer would it be before Cyrus was teaching students how to conjure dragon riders from the sky or martyred necromancers from their history books? The myth of their triumph will be in books for years to come, but only the heartbreak of losing those you loved raged on.

“I don’t think I’ll be apologizing to the headmaster, either,” Victoria nods with finality. “I don’t think he’s deserving of that.”

“I don’t blame you,” Cyrus replies, inhaling slowly over his teacup. “I’m sorry that things turned out this way.”

Looking down into the teacup, Victoria’s eyes gaze over the leaves that were still left behind. In her tasseography, she saw a sword, a shield, a skull. Hindsight is 20/20, she presumes, but she wishes she could have had this reading before entering Dragonspyre. If she had known she was going to be coming home empty-handed, she wouldn’t have shared Gabriel’s enthusiasm at seeing his homeland. Quietly, she places her cup down in front of her professor, rising to her feet. Brown hair drips down her shoulders, heavy with sweat and grime that stained her cheeks, her hands— blood crusted underneath her fingernails, her eyes hollow and lifeless. Whoever Victoria Mythcaller was before she left for Dragonspyre, she was not that person now, and Cyrus knew that she was not going to pretend.

In their shared look, she had answered his questions. She was going home — not to Marleybone, where she would sit in the company of her distant, adoptive parents, but to the fortress she had built for herself in a private space behind the Spiral Door. She would recuse herself, hiding in her love of gardening, with only the company of her pets to tend to her needs for socialization. She would build things at crafting stations and send them off to the auction house in Olde Town, where Elik would sell them to incoming students without telling them that the precious Savior of the Spiral forged them herself. She would wait until she grew old and haggerty, when grey stained her short brown hair, and she would pass away, quietly. Wizard City wanted a hero, and they could have had one, if they took care of her better. She would not give them the gilded fable they wanted, the staff-wielding conjurer who brought order to an unruly place.

She would not give them that satisfaction, and Cyrus did not blame her. 

**Author's Note:**

> to clarify: victoria, gabriel, and another wizard named samantha journeyed together through the canonical timeline of the game up until dragonspyre. when they confronted malistaire as per canon-compliance, gabriel and samantha were killed and victoria came home and was named 'savior of the spiral'. because they were "children" (teenagers, 14 when they arrived at ravenwood for the first time and 18 by the end of the dragonspyre arc), she's not happy about their death.
> 
> this is part of a larger arc, and you can check out their pinterest board @ https://www.pinterest.com/motherconjurer/the-call-chronicles/. i talk about them often on my w101 sideblog @ mythtraps.


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